Yes, it was tested on MBTA routes circa 1980 and even ran briefly in revenue passenger service as a midday Lowell-Concord, NH, round trip with connections to Boston. (At the time there was also a morning Concord-Boston train with a return in the evening). That experiment ended following a grade crossing accident that left it dented. After being fixed up and leaving Boston it ran for a while on a tourist line in West Virginia (Durbin & Greenbrier Valley), and it now resides in somewhat rusty condition at the Connecticut Trolley Museum in Warehouse Point. I understand that it is available for adoption since the museum considers it to be outside the scope of its collection.

I doubt that this sort of vehicle ever had a chance in Boston due to its very limited capacity.

It was actually LEV2, a longer version that crashed in MBTA service.Quite frankly, as a Brit who is proud of our rail network, I can't imagine what they were thinking trying for the US export market them. These first prototypes weren't even as large as the UK loading gauge, which is far smaller than the US one and they were very basic. The production run of class 142 units were larger, and two car but even then they give a poor travelling experience. However at the time BR was strapped for cash and they undoubtedly kept some lightly used rural lines open due to being cheap so they had their place. Nowadays they are often used in pairs of twin units for busy commuter services. Luckily they are due for replacement over the next few years.Here they are sometimes known as 'nodding donkeys' due to the ride of the 4 wheeled chassis on jointed track, I can't imagine what they would do on track with staggered joints.

Last edited by talltim on Tue Mar 22, 2016 5:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

I was Googling around on a different topic and tripped over this URL to a somewhat relevant B&MRRHS article about B&M Manchester freight and passenger ops. There's a photo of a LEV-1 test run at Manchester on pg 5 and brief discussion of LEV-2's brief operations on page 14. Plus there's interesting illustrated and detailed description of B&M freight/passenger and MBTA ops in the 14 page article.